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The following presentation was given on 24 July 2012 to the DevOps Brisbane group. Some of the technical detail about Vagrant is outdated but I think it provides a good overview of why moving to a "Infrastructure as code" setup makes a lot of sense.

One of the most common issues of newcomers to eZ Publish is the setup of a system suitable for running it. Without a correctly configured system in place they usually do not get beyond the installation process and abandon their evaluation before having experienced the product.

In my last blog post I wrote about an eZ Publish Puppet module that I'd created that could be used to setup and install eZ Publish.

Its been awhile since I'd done any work on it (and blogged for that matter!) and in that time both Puppet and Vagrant have matured considerably. I've also had more experience creating Puppet modules and managing systems with Puppet.

I've decided to re-write the eZ Publish module from scratch utilising Puppets own modules for apache and mysql.

The overall functionality in the new module is essentially the same as the old one, but elements have been decoupled. This allows for the various components that make up an eZ Publish "stack" to be combined to match the desired architecture. e.g. a standalone system with the database and application on the one system to a clustered systems where different components are on separate systems.

This is not another how to setup Ubuntu to run eZ Publish guide...well not really.

One of the biggest hurdles when getting started with eZ Publish is successfully installing the CMS. This process often fails because the system on which it is being installed is not configured correctly. If you do not have a helpful systems administrator handy it can be quite difficult to get past the initial steps.

There are a number of solutions that allow you to manage the configuration of computer systems. Two of the most popular are Puppet & Chef. These systems allow you to create "recipes" of how systems should be setup.

I've put together a eZ Publish module for Puppet that: Configures a system suitable to run eZ Publish Setup Virtual Hosts configured to run eZ Publish Sets up a Database Downloads eZ Publish Configures a kickstart.ini file
It's a bit like a guide to setting up eZ publish on Ubuntu but doesn't require you to manually follow the steps (and that you ca…

Following on from yesterdays post on checking out the eZ Admin Interface prototype I've created an extension that can be easily downloaded, installed and enabled.Download the extension from hereCopy to your extension directory and untar:

tar xzf admin2prototype.tgz

Enable it in your admin siteaccess by editing settings/siteaccess/site_admin/site.ini.append.php and adding:

[ExtensionSettings]ActiveAccessExtensions[]=admin2prototype

Clear the cacheTo disable, simply remove the settings from step 3 above and clear the cache.

Note: If you enable the extension via the admin interface (Setup -> Extensions) this will effect all site accesses including your front end ones.

Things to check out in the prototype:Lack of Shop and Design tabs - these are disabled by default in eZ Publish 4.3Hidden right menu. Click on the [+] to expandContent menu (Left Hand side under Content, Users & Media Tabs) can be variably sized. Grab the bottom right hand corner and drag to desired sizeDifferent co…

The Admin Interface Refresh project has had a concept implemented that can be reviewed live with an eZ Publish install. This is a guide on how to get things working.

The new Admin Interface design is a prototype and it's constantly being refined so don't try this on your production servers.

Starting from a clean install of eZ Publish 4.2 with the the eZ Flow package (with content)Change into the design directory # cd designCheckout the design# svn co http://pubsvn.ez.no/nextgen/trunk/design/admin2Edit settings/siteaccess/admin_site/site.ini.append.php and change the SiteDesign to admin2[DesignSettings]SiteDesign=admin2Grab new menu.ini - this is required to display the left hand menus under Setup and My account.# cd settings/siteaccess/admin_site/# wget http://pubsvn.ez.no/nextgen/trunk/settings/menu.iniClear the cacheYou should now be able to view the new interface and it should look something like this:

To revert back to the original interface:Remove the menu.ini from the ad…

The eZ Publish winter conference is a free conference being held in Geneva on 21st and 22nd of January 2010, with the Community Day being held on the 22nd.

If you are like me and can't make it there is some exciting news! eZ Publish's Community Manager Nicolas Pastorino has setup a Ustream account for the eZ Community and scheduled a event for the community day.

I've covered two larger topics in other blog posts (Admin interface users & Dashboards) so in this post I'm going to cover a number of smaller suggestions I have for the Admin Interface refresh.

Some of the items have been suggested by others and been added to the specification - I hope I've noted these.Improve underlying HTMLDamien has already mentioned linking labels with their related input via the for attribute. I wasn't aware that there was already an issue for this but I made a start of adding a Accessibility & Usability Improvements project that currently "associates labels with specific form elements, adds "required" class to required input elements to allow attachment of javascript validation".